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April 19, 2008 06:17 pm
Indiana set to host another presidential race
Before the then 42-year-old Robert F. Kennedy decided to make a charge for president, he visited New Albany High School in 1966 to speak on behalf of 8th District congressional hopeful Winfield K. Denton. He spoke to a crowd of near 4,500 people in the NAHS gymnasium, according to newspaper reports.
By DANIEL SUDDEATH
CNHI News Service
NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Indiana was set as a presidential battleground complete with a blitz of television commercials and appearances by the candidates. Volunteers set up election centers where thousands of phone calls were made and pamphlets distributed throughout the southern part of the state.
A Democratic Party presidential hopeful rode into New Albany before a Jeffersonville stop to cheers and boos. Supporters swooned while protesters — some from the same political party — grumbled complaints as they waited to see their proclaimed enemy.
The anticipation, the sounds and the energy proved how important Indiana has become in deciding the possible next leader of the United States.
This was 1968.
The 2008 election has reintroduced presidential primary campaigning four decades later to Indiana with high-profile visitors and advertising directed at Hoosier votes. However, 40 years ago this month, it was Robert F. Kennedy twice visiting Clark and Floyd counties to gain support in a tightly contested primary.
The former U.S. Attorney General and brother to an assassinated president was not the only candidate to come to Southern Indiana. Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy traveled to the area on April 26, 1968, just two days after Kennedy’s visit.
Indiana Gov. Roger Branigan — the favorite son candidate who started as a sit-in for President Lyndon Johnson — sandwiched a stop in-between when he strolled through downtown New Albany on April 25.
Kennedy’s April visit precluded a May 5 trip to New Albany, just two days before the 1968 primary, when he scraped out a narrow victory over Branigan. McCarthy, known as the anti-war candidate, finished third in Indiana.
But by several accounts, Kennedy’s trips along the north side of the Ohio River drew the most excitement.
Pat Geary is a Jeffersonville resident who served as a hostess during one of Kennedy’s trips to New Albany. She said meeting the junior senator from New York was one of the highlights of her life.
“He was just like royalty. I thought, ‘this is the closest I’ll ever get to a prince’,” Geary said.
She was working as a dental assistant at the time and said she will always remember Kennedy’s beautiful smile.
“He was such a charming man,” she said.
Clark County resident Laura Jackson recalls Kennedy’s April visit to New Albany and Jeffersonville.
Jackson and several family members gathered along Charlestown Road in New Albany to “get a glimpse” of Kennedy, who was making his way to give a speech to an estimated 5,000 people at the corner of Pearl and Market streets.
She remembers Kennedy’s car pulling up near where they stood. The back door swung open and there sat the man of the hour, worn out from intense campaigning across the Hoosier state.
“He was so tired — you could just see it in his face that he was extremely exhausted,” Jackson said.
She remembers him saying hello and then stopping to speak to children that had gathered near the car.
According to the April 25, 1968, edition of The Tribune, Kennedy stopped at the Colonial Swimming Pool on Charlestown Road to switch rides, hopping into a convertible so he could wave to the crowd, despite chilly conditions.
Kennedy made a stop at the Providence Retirement Home along Spring Street before continuing on to give a 15-minute speech in downtown New Albany.
Marilyn Mattingly served as co-chairwoman in organizing Kennedy’s second visit to New Albany in May of 1968, when he stopped at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Main Street, accompanied by his wife, Ethel.
Mattingly, along with co-chairman Bob Potter, rode to the event with Kennedy. As Kennedy prepared his speech, she remembered reminding Kennedy that he had been in Jeffersonville before when campaigning for his brother John F. Kennedy’s presidential bid in 1960.
The drive to New Albany from Youngstown took but a few minutes, but the memories have lasted through the years.
“He was trying to add to his notes. He was using this thin little flashlight to see while writing. I always regretted that I didn’t ask him afterward if I could have those notes,” said Mattingly, who was then Marilyn Perry.
The reason those pieces of paper mattered so much to Mattingly was because her name, along with Potter’s, was on them. According to the May 6, 1968, edition of The Tribune, Kennedy thanked the two for “so efficiently and effectively organizing the reception.”
Mattingly remembers the joy both her and Potter felt when Clark County ultimately went to Kennedy, and also the sorrow when just a few months later he met the same fate as his brother, John, when he was shot inside the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Kennedy was celebrating a June 5 victory over McCarthy in California before meeting his demise. Sirhan Sirhan was charged with the murder, as the Palestinian said he shot presidential candidate because of his pro-Israel stance.
“For two years almost, I grieved over that. It was just like a family member dying,” Mattingly said.
WHEN THE MAN COMES TO TOWN
Larry Smith moved to New Albany in 1988, but long before becoming president of the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville, he served as news editor of the Bedford Daily Times-Mail.
He remembers 1968 and the magnitude of the Indiana primary.
“It was the first time since 1920 that presidential candidates had come to Southern Indiana,” Smith said.
Smith covered the Kennedy and McCarthy visits to Southern Indiana, including when the two both appeared on separate occasions at the Salem Courthouse.
During one of McCarthy’s visits, Smith was invited to tag along inside the senator’s car. He said McCarthy’s demeanor reminded him of his grandfather.
Seeing so many flock to hear both Kennedy and McCarthy speak proved how rare such a well-known figure visit to rural Indiana was, Smith said.
“It was quiet a festive event, as well as a big deal for a small community in Southern Indiana,” he said.
CONNECTING TO 2008
Ray Boomhower is senior editor of the Indiana Historical Society’s quarterly magazine “Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History,” and has been with the society since 1987.
He recently released his 10th book, “Robert F. Kennedy and the 1968 Indiana Primary” and will be speaking at 7 p.m. Saturday at Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany.
He compares Kennedy to today’s Democratic nominee hopeful Barack Obama, because of the platform of change.
Boomhower draws more parallels between the 1968 and 2008 Indiana Democratic primaries.
“Supporters between the camps seemed to have a growing animosity between the two,” he said.
After Kennedy died, many of his supporters refused to get behind McCarthy, which left the door open for Hubert Humphrey, who served as vice president under Johnson, to win the nomination.
Boomhower said McCarthy supporters tended to dislike Kennedy because they felt he was trying to steal the Minnesota senator’s thunder. Kennedy spoke out against the Vietnam War, but it was McCarthy who first declared his opposition, and his intention to take on Johnson, who would later drop out of the race.
A separation between Obama and Hillary Clinton supporters could be similar to the Kennedy vs. McCarthy situation, Boomhower said.
It is also interesting to note that Ethel Kennedy has campaigned for Obama and Ted Kennedy has endorsed him.
Boomhower said Kennedy put forth a major effort in Indiana and he will forever be linked with the state after delivering a well-noted Martin Luther King Jr. speech in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968, after the minister and civil rights activist was gunned down.
Boomhower and Smith said that Kennedy, like Obama, seemed to have a rock-star quality about him.
“It was like a circus atmosphere for his campaign stops. People were grabbing at him, his hands were often raw and bloody at the end of the day from people’s fingernails scratching his hand,” Boomhower said.
Daniel Suddeath writes for The Evening News in Jeffersonville, Ind.
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